This blog consists of PhotoFeature Stories on artists of all genres, human interest stories, guest blog posts, book reviews, and book excerpts.
CHRIS RICE COOPER is a newspaper writer, feature stories writer, poet, fiction writer, photographer, and painter.
She has a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice and is close to completing her Master's in Creative Writing.
She, her husband Wayne, sons Nicholas and Caleb, cats Nation and Alaska reside in the St. Louis area.

Chris Rice Cooper

Chris on July 28, 2017

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Guest Blogger Kelly Sundberg: Can Confessional Writing Be Literary?

When I defended
my MFA thesis—a collection of linked personal essays—one of my committee
members, the only woman on my committee, said to me, “So many women have been
traumatized on these pages. I don’t know women to whom things like this have
happened. It seems a bit melodramatic.” I don’t remember how I
responded. I remember how I wanted to respond. I wanted to say, “Is it
melodramatic if it’s true?”

After the
defense, on the way to my car, I called my best friend and told her about the
comment, and about how much it had confused me. My friend’s response was that
maybe that committee member was not the type of woman whose friends would trust
her with their stories of trauma, and therefore, that was why the committee
member didn’t think the stories existed. It never occurred to either of us that
the committee member’s friends hadn’t suffered acts of gender
violence. Based on our own (admittedly limited) subset of friends, but also on
the statistics that show one in three women will be subjected to gender
violence in their lifetime, the committee member’s friends having escaped
gender violence simply didn’t seem possible.

At the time of
my thesis defense, I hadn’t yet acknowledged that I was being physically
battered by my then-spouse. That acknowledgment came later, in the form of an
essay that was later anthologized in Best American Essays 2015. If
this committee member read that essay, I wonder if she thought it, too, was
melodramatic? All I know is that everything I described in that essay really
happened. If it was melodramatic, it was still truth.

http://www.jessacrispin.com/I don’t know
that pain is a ticket to any “club” that I would want to be a part of, but
personally, I am worried about having to constantly assert my legitimacy as a
literary writer, simply because I often write about my experience of trauma. I
am worried about the notion that writing about trauma is somehow easier (or
less than) other writing.

In all honesty,
many of us have traumatic stories, and perhaps this is where the stigma
originates—the easy access we have to our own experiences—but simply having the
story doesn’t mean that we can write it well. As literary writers, when writing
about our individual traumas, we’re still called upon to use the elements of
our craft in a way that strives to move beyond the individual story, and
instead, capture something universal, or offer something educational. When I
wrote my anthologized essay, “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” my goal was not to
exploit my own trauma for personal gain. My goal was to show readers why I
stayed for so long in a relationship that had become dangerous.I had always
been a literary essayist with an interest in complex structures, and I used the
fragmented structure of this particular essay to represent the see/saw of love
and violence that is symptomatic of domestic abuse. The essay went through many
revisions and had multiple readers; It was hard work to try and write about a
traumatic subject, while also maintaining a high level of craft.

In her essay,
Crispin also wrote, “Suddenly women writers were being valued for their stories
of surviving violence and trauma.” This seems dismissive to me of the
literary merit of these writers. The writers she describes—such as Roxane Gay
and Leslie Jamison—are valued because they are excellent writers. They may
have stories of surviving violence and trauma, but it is the ways in which they
tell these stories that distinguishes them from other writers in the field.

When I sit down
to write literary writing about my trauma, I am a writer first, and a trauma
survivor second, but I am not ever not a trauma survivor, and as such,
I am often interested in examining the roots and effects of my own trauma.
Sometimes, I am interested in examining these effects in ways that might be
considered therapeutic—that dastardly term that literary nonfiction
writers hate. As a result, I have created a separate writing space—my
blog—where the writing is not about my craft, but rather, about my story. The
blog is where I talk about my journey of recovery, and the blog frees up my
emotional space and intellect, so that I can approach my literary writing with
more remove and thoughtfulness. Like most literary writers, I do not believe
that literary writing should be therapeutic. When I teach creative
nonfiction workshops, I tell my students that the therapy needs to come before
the writing.

In her essay, “The Memoir of Recovery (Not
Discovery),” in Kirkus Reviews, Debra Monroe laments the current state
of memoir, where she posits that “The memoir became therapeutic: a narrative
offshoot of self-help.” On many levels, I agree with Monroe. In one instance,
she describes an editor who responded to her manuscript with “I just wish her
childhood had been worse!” I can imagine how frustrated Monroe must have felt
by that response, but when my own memoir proposal went out on submission, I
received a somewhat different response.

One editor,
after having read my blog (which very openly addresses the lingering effects of
my domestic abuse) said that she didn’t feel the ending of my story was happy
enough (I’m paraphrasing here). Another editor, with whom I spoke on the phone,
asked me if I thought my memoir would have a “redemptive ending.” I answered
that, of course I did. After all, I got out of the marriage. What could be more
redemptive than that? But I added that, if someone is looking for a Lifetime
Movie-esque redemptive ending, they won’t find that in my story.

In the end I
was able to place my book with an editor who seemed to respect my work and my
aesthetic, and who I trust will not pressure me to change my actual, lived
experience in an effort to get more readers.

Truthfully,
with the editorial feedback we received, Monroe and I were both victims of the
same problem—that of memoirs being posited as “recovery” and “redemptive.” In
this way, even though, like Crispin, Monroe laments our culture’s infatuation
with traumatic experiences, she also differs from Crispin. Monroe thinks the
problem is with the focus on recovery. Crispin thinks the problem is that women
are valued for their wounds. To Crispin, I would say that I am not grateful for
my wounds. To Monroe, I would say that I am also not redeemed by them. My
wounds are simply a part of my existence. Still, because I am interested in an
examination of the self, my wounds have, naturally, become a subject of my
writing.

Part of what I
appreciate about the writing of Leslie Jamison and Roxane Gay’s writing is
the way they both actively resist portraying their wounds as redemptive.
Instead, they address the wounds honestly, sometimes brutally, and with all of
the tools in their arsenal that true literary giants possess—beautiful
language, interesting structures, nuanced examinations of culture, and novel
forms of presentation.

With my own writing,
I seek to approach trauma in the same way. The story is important, but it must
also be written with craft, and with nuance. I have no desire to always write
about trauma, nor have I always written about trauma, but I am fatigued by the
notion that narratives of trauma are rewarded simply on the merits of the
struggle that one has endured. I had a traumatic experience, and perhaps that
did gain me entrance into a club—a club of women’s pain—but that traumatic
experience did not make me a literary writer. My hard work and my craft are
what have, hopefully, made me into a literary writer.

Kelly Sundberg is Brevity’s
Managing Editor. Her essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines
and been listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2013. Her essay,
“It Will Look Like a Sunset” was anthologized in Best American Essays 2015,
and a memoir inspired by that essay, Goodbye Sweet Girl, is
forthcoming from HarperCollins Publishers in 2017.

2 comments:

Dear Kelly, I believe that one of the reasons people read stories is for the guideposts on how to cope with this difficult beautiful life. Stories of overcoming trauma have been beloved forever (Charles Dickens to The Things They Carried) and it disturbs me that there seems to be a different set of criteria for women memoir writers. I agree that although we all have stories, we do not all have the skills to tell them well; therefore, it is up to those of us who have the skills to be a powerful voice. As you say, 1 in 3 of us have experienced abuse. Unfortunately marketing a book seems to be another beast. Thanks for your courage to tell your story and for your insights in this post.